WhatsApp empowers women, kids with 'Live Location' feature

In a move that will help women and kids connect with their families and friends as they travel, Facebook-owned WhatsApp has introduced 'Live Location' feature.

The feature that allows people to share location in real-time with family or friends.

The end-to-end encrypted feature lets people control who they share with and for how long. You can choose to stop sharing at any time or let the Live Location timer simply expire.

"The Live Location feature in WhatsApp makes women feel confident about sharing their real-time location or a journey with someone close, so that it can be tracked for a purpose and privately," said Sohini Bhattacharya, CEO of Breakthrough, a non-profit organisation, in a statement on Wednesday.

This is how this feature works. Open a chat with the person or group you want to share with. Under "Location" in the attach button, there's a new option to "Share Live Location".

Choose for how long you want to share and tap send. Each person in the chat will be able to see your real-time location on a map.

And if more than one person shares their Live Location in the group, all locations will be visible on the same map.

Live Location is available on both Android and iPhone and will be rolling out in the app in the coming weeks.

This feature will prove to be extremely useful during disasters and crisis situations, as help and relief can be provided more effectively and quickly.

"For women, in unsafe and dangerous situations, it may be a helpful tool for police officials and families, as real-time locations can be shared easily in WhatsApp," said Ranjana Kumari from Centre for Social Research.